


Stolen Dance

by hazelevesques



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen, Mild Angst, cute and fluffy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 11:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1743929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazelevesques/pseuds/hazelevesques
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Percy and Nico (now aged 20 and 17, respectively) visit the Jackson-Blofis household during summer break.  Basically a bunch of cuteness over Sally Jackson taking Nico in for the summer.  No Percico or Percabeth... sorry. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

 “Are you coming or not?” Percy’s tone was impatient.  “I want to make it before tomorrow, please.”  Percy jostled his backpack from shoulder to shoulder.  Waiting wasn’t his strong suit, especially now that he could practically smell the homemade cookies waiting for him.

 “I just… are you sure I’m invited?” Before Percy could answer, Nico interrupted him.  “I don’t mean by you.  I mean, is your mom totally fine with me just showing up?”

“Yes, now c’mon!”  Percy impatiently grabbed Nico by the wrist and tugged him towards the cab that was waiting at the bottom of the hill.  His stomach growled as they walked.  At this time of year, Camp Half Blood was brutally hot.  Manhattan, where Percy lived, was only an hour away and was surely experiencing the same heat wave.  The major difference between the two was the smell.  Camp Half Blood smelled sweetly of strawberries, iced tea, and flowers.  It was pleasant, but what the son of Neptune really wanted was to be surrounded with the scent of hot dogs, pretzels, sweat, and even the faint smell of hot garbage.  Sure, on paper it was disgusting, but to Percy it signaled that he was home.  Getting into the taxi filled Percy with excitement.  Although he only came to Camp Half Blood during the summer months, he was now spending the school year at Montana University.  Most breaks, he either stayed on campus or went to visit Annabeth. 

Just as Percy was trying to backdate exactly how long it had been since he had visited home, one of the cab doors opened.  Annabeth Chase swung her bag across the seat (and into Percy’s lap). Distracted by somebody outside the taxi, she started to sit in the occupied seat.  She turned, and Percy recognized the little wrinkle in her brow as confusion.   Before the first word of her apology was fully formed, she realized who she was sitting on.  This was soon followed by a gentle ‘oh’ of disgust. “I didn’t know you were in this one, Percy,” she muttered before slamming the door behind her.  Without another word, Percy leaned forward and gave the cab driver his mother’s address. 

Wide-eyed, Nico looked at Percy.  “You’re not… she’s not… what?”  His heart pounded against his ribcage.  “Why isn’t she coming?”  For a second Nico hated the shred of hope that tugged somewhere near his heart.  It had been years since he had thought of Percy romantically.  However, the mere idea that the ‘Dream Team’ of Annabeth and Percy had broken up piqued his interest.  He scolded himself, knowing full well that Percy was still awkwardly older than he was, that Percy probably wasn’t gay, and about a million other things concerning their incompatibility.  It took too long for Nico to shake off his feelings towards Percy the first time, and he certainly wouldn’t let all of that flood back in now.

“We’re… taking a break.”  Percy avoided eye contact with his friend.  “She’s decided to look at her other options.”  He spat the words, suddenly less excited than he seemed before. 

No wonder he had begged for somebody to accompany him back home.  Usually the daughter of Athena sat where Nico was now, and without a doubt an empty cab would certainly have felt awkward.  “What do you mean, other options?”

The silence that followed was painful.  It was clear that the older boy didn’t want to discuss whatever had happened.  For at least half an hour, the car remained quiet.  Nico shoved his earbuds in, letting music fill the space for him. He played the lame games downloaded on his iPod and tried to make the time pass more quickly.  Nico couldn’t have been more relieved when they pulled up to Percy’s apartment. 

While the boys unloaded their bags, Nico felt his stomach grow heavy.  He had overheard a lot of things about Mrs. Jackson from Annabeth and Percy, but he had only ever actually met her one time, very briefly.  Somehow he had a feeling that it would take a lot of patience for him to deal with her for the entire week.  People that upbeat didn’t have much of a place in Nico’s life, except maybe Hazel.  But as his sister, she was a major exception.  With his duffle bag hoisted onto his shoulder Nico followed Percy up the steps.  The first (and last) time he had been here, he had kind of appeared onto the fire escape outside of Percy’s window.  Now, almost three years later, he was going up the actual front steps and into the elevator. 

As the lobby was replaced with the boys’ reflections in the gilded elevator doors, Percy took a loud breath.  “She’s decided she likes girls now,” he blurted in a rush.  The words hung in the air.  “I don’t understand how she can date me for years and then just choose to be bisexual.”

After a beat of silence, Nico decided to speak up.  “I- I don’t think it works that way.”  Even after the Cupid situation (as Nico had grown to think of it), he never found it necessary to reveal his sexuality to everybody on the Argo II.  There were only 3 demigods that were aware of his former crush on Percy, and his sexuality—Jason, Hazel, and interestingly enough, Annabeth.  Not that it was a source of anxiety for him anymore.  Three years ago, Nico might have spent most of his time talking to dead people and sleeping, but now he was more at peace with himself.  With Percy’s uncomfortable wording and misplaced anger about Annabeth liking girls (something that Nico had been privy to for a few months now), Nico felt he had to defend her.  On behalf of all the queer demigods or something. 

Unfortunately, the brassy elevator doors opened and Nico found himself face to face with Sally Jackson-Blofis.  For an uncomfortable moment, she looked back and forth between the boys—she seemed to sense the thick tension surrounding their conversation.  It seemed like forever before she smiled and held one arm out for a hug.  Nico hesitated.  He wasn’t accustomed to hugging people he didn’t know, but he was drawn to her anyway.  Stepping closer to her, Nico realized he was much, much taller than she.  His chin rested on top of her head as she took one boy in each arm. 

“Nico!  Percy didn’t tell me you’d be visiting this week!” She nudged her son between the ribs playfully.  “Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll make up the guest bed for you, won’t he?  You boys are _just_ in time for dinner, too.  What great timing!”

* * *

 

When Nico finished eating his second helping of spaghetti and meatballs (“I made the sauce from scratch!” Paul had added joyfully when Nico asked for seconds) he got up to wash his dishes out and go to the guest room.  He only stopped when he realized that everybody was looking at him oddly. 

“Usually after dinner, Nico, we sit and talk about our days.  You’re more than welcome to join us,” Sally said gently.

On one hand, Nico didn’t want to be rude, but he wasn’t in the mood to sit around the table and _chat_.  What he wanted was to go into the guest bedroom and sleep.  He also wanted to figure out what exactly had happened between Annabeth and Percy—and when.  “I think I’ll just go in and go to bed,” Nico declined.  He went to the kitchen and rinsed off his dishes. 

As the suds in the sink grew into a small mountain, he listened to the family in the dining room discussing their days. It was such a mundane ritual, but it seemed to be important to them.  He felt guilty for walking away from the invitation.  Sally had extended a sweet smile to him at the table, and he had declined.  In the moment it had seemed like the more polite thing to do—why intrude on their family time when he was already crashing their home?  Now, standing in the kitchen alone, he felt like he was only isolating himself. 

The plate thoroughly scrubbed clean, Nico shuffled down the hallway and into the guest room.  Standing in the doorway, he took in the décor.  The room was painted pastel yellow.  The sheets were white with a light blue quilt over the top.  It was exactly opposite of how the son of Hades would decorate his room.  It _almost_ made Nico laugh, to see where he would be staying for… a week?  Two?  He realized Percy didn’t say how long they would be staying at the apartment.  Unfortunately, Nico didn’t have anywhere else to go when he felt like he was overstaying his welcome here.  Camp Half Blood was certainly an option, but going there was always a pain in the ass.  People looked at him like he was scum—and he might as well be.  Even after everything he had done during the war (not to brag or anything) he was still the son of the Underworld.  Trash.  With a resigned sigh, he crawled under the covers.  The digital clock told him it was only ten in the evening, but that was late enough.  Laying in the dark, Nico tried to shut out the sounds of laughter coming from the dining room.  He hated knowing he would never be that happy.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Lots of angst, allusions to death (c'mon... its Nico), and cute mothering Sally

As demigods were apt to do, Nico had a vivid dream that evening.  During the time of the prophecies, he always dreamt about something relevant to their quests.  However, his first night in the Jackson-Blofis household, Nico had a very different kind of dream.   In this dream, Nico found himself in a darkened room, sitting on a bed.  He had the faint feeling that he had been there before—just a gut instinct—but the room looked unfamiliar to him.  His heart pounded against his ribcage mercilessly, although he didn’t understand why he was afraid.  After what seemed like hours, the door on the other side of the room cracked open.  Light flooded in, and Nico was temporarily blinded.  What he saw when his eyes finally adjusted made his stomach ache.  He knew the people who walked into the room couldn’t hear him, but he yelled out anyways.  _“Mamma!  Mamma, Bianca!”_

He watched as his mother picked up Bianca and spun her around in circles.  The two laughed and danced while Nico sat in silence.  The way they carried on made every part of him hurt.  He missed his carefree sister, his _divertente,_ silly mother.  This was so long before any of the bad stuff happened.  Nico ached to stay asleep forever, to enjoy these lasting moments with his family, even if they couldn’t see or hear him.  Just as he started to get carried away with the idea of eternal sleep, Bianca and Maria walked back out the door.  Nico screamed until his throat went raw, “ _No!  Mamma, per favore! Mamma, restare!”_ but the room flicked and changed to paint a different scene. 

He didn’t care where the dream was taking him.  Nico sat where he was and closed his eyes.  The sobs came out with strangled gasps for air.  Nothing mattered anymore.  Internally, Nico still felt like he was screaming.  His throat was sore from crying.  The few minutes that he had gotten to see his _mamma_ were not enough.  Not even close.  He would have stayed as he was until he woke up—knees tucked to his chest, eyes screwed shut—if it hadn’t been for the voices around him.  There was a lot of background noise, but above it all he heard her voice, loud and clear.  “Nico!  Come look at this game!”

He opened his eyes, blinking in the light.  He knew exactly where he was although the words refused to formulate fully.  Apparently even _dreaming_ of this place dulled his senses.  Kids ran around screaming, playing different arcade games.  Some ran with buckets full of tickets, and others looked disoriented, as if they had just arrived.  After fighting the atmosphere, Nico whispered the words aloud.  He was in the Lotus Hotel.  Looking, around, he spotted Bianca playing a crane machine game, with all sorts of things as prizes.  Nico felt his throat tighten once again.  It bothered him that he couldn’t remember this at all.  Logically, he knew that this was the nature of the Lotus, that nobody could remember the details of their stay because they all blurred together.  This was the longest time he had spent with Bianca—70 consecutive years—and it all had blurred together in three days’ worth of time.  He didn’t remember any specifics of it.

Nico walked to where Bianca played the game with his past self and leaned against the crane machine.  He studied her face meticulously.  He wanted to remember everything about her.  When she lost, her face scrunched up a little and her mouth pouted out.  When she won, the excitement started in her eyes and spread to the rest of her body.  Nico had forgotten this about her.  When Bianca was happy, it exploded out of her in bursts of energy.  She wiggled in place each time she got tickets or when she won candy out of the claw game.  But even with each win came a new force of determination.  She had always been like that; she was stubborn, even when she was coming out on top.  It didn’t sit right with him, how easily he had forgotten these details of his sister.

From a distance, Nico heard some kind of scuffle.  He looked up in time to see a group of Official Lotus Security Guards ™ fighting with a kind of haggish woman in a suit.  They tried to push her out the door, but she ducked under their arms and made a beeline in the di Angelos’ direction.  Somehow he didn’t put two and two together until it was too late to prepare himself.  This was it.  The day that the “lawyer” came to take the siblings from the time warp that was the Lotus Hotel and Casino.  He watched his sister put herself between the strange hag and her younger brother.  Bianca did all the talking, all the arguing, and all of the understanding before taking her brother by the hand and leading him out.  This scene started to flicker again, obviously transporting him to another place, but he woke with a start. 

Sally sat on the edge of the guest bed, one hand on Nico’s forehead.  As his eyes blinked open, he noticed the worried look on her face.  “Nico, sweetie, you’ve been asleep for so long…is everything alright?”  She was so obviously concerned for somebody that she hardly knew that it startled the son of Hades. 

Hesitantly, Nico looked around the room, confirming that it was only the two of them.  “Could we talk, Ms. Jackson?” 

To a demigod, dreams were everything.  Even if they didn’t seem urgent, they almost always meant something important.  Shockingly, even to himself, Nico thought his dreams were urging him to talk to Sally.  There was only one person that he had thoroughly discussed Bianca and Maria with, and that was Hazel.  The way that Sally had treated him last night, combined with the concern in her eyes now, made him want to talk to her about his life.  She just seemed like the right kind of person. 

* * *

 

Nico sat on the overstuffed green sofa quietly while Sally made tea in the kitchen.  Paul and Percy had gone out for lunch (“bonding”) and the apartment was so quiet he could hear the microwave running.  It made Nico weirdly happy to know that Sally was ‘cheating’, using a microwave instead of a kettle.  Every once in a while, he would hear her whistle a tune he couldn’t quite place.  It sounded, perhaps, like a Four Seasons song from the sixties. Percy’s mother walked back into the living room with a bounce in her step, carrying two mugs of spearmint tea.  She sat on the ottoman near the couch, which Nico noted as interesting.  She was close enough to provide any support, but she was keeping her distance.  It occurred to him that Sally didn’t quite know how to read him yet.  He briefly wondered if she was afraid of him like everybody else seemed to be.  She was quiet, and it took Nico some time to realize that she was just waiting for him to talk.  Nobody ever did that for him. 

“I don’t know where to start,” Nico said. 

She nodded slowly.  With hesitance, she reached one hand out and put it on his knee.  Her touch was gentle, like any mother’s should be.  “Anywhere.”

It took him a long time to get the entire story out.  He had been worried about having to explain things like Zeus’ hatred for him, or the Lotus Hotel, but she had heard similar things from her son.  There were times where Nico got caught up, like when talking about how caring Bianca had been in the military school, or the way his mother used to tuck him in at night.  There were even times where Nico got so into the story that he began to speak Italian, before he realized that Sally had no idea what he was saying.  No matter what happened during his story, Mrs. Jackson-Blofis listened.  She listened for a good two hours before she responded to anything he was saying.  After he got to speaking of the dreams from the night before, the ephemeral flashbacks to happier days, she broke her silence. 

“You’ve been through a lot,” she said quietly.  Her tone was so calm, it almost scared him.  Did he overwhelm her with everything?  After some time, he recognized her expression as understanding.  She felt for him on a level he hadn’t expected.  She spoke again, this time, a question.  “Is it alright if I hug you?”

Slowly, he nodded.  Sally moved from ottoman to couch and enveloped Nico in a hug.  Surprisingly, this is what broke him.  How could a woman who hardly knew him care about him this much?  It caused such dissonance in Nico’s mind that he broke down, silently crying.  This was the same way his mother had hugged him when he had been upset, or how Bianca hugged him after their mother’s death.  Hazel hugged him like this often.  But Sally… she hugged him with this kind of familial love even though he wasn’t even remotely part of her family. 

Sometime later, Nico pulled away from Sally.  He studied her as he had studied Bianca in his dream the night before.  With care, he memorized every wrinkle that lined her pretty face, every expression she made, the way she drank her now-cold tea, how her smile was slightly lopsided, and how she tucked her hair behind her ears even when it was already in place.  He was committed to never forgetting anybody who could care about him this much.  Sally left Nico to put their mugs in the sink (he felt momentarily guilty that he hadn’t touched it, but she reassured him it was fine) while he composed himself.  When she came back in the room, the front door swung open and Paul and Percy came in, effectively ending Nico and Sally’s conversation. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is already angstier than originally intended, but the idea of Sally mothering Nico just makes me squee! Reviews welcome and needed. -S


End file.
